Top 10 Growth Hacking Strategies For Small Businesses

As an entrepreneur, you want a high ROI (Return On Investment) from your business, regardless of whether you’ve been open for years or are just starting your business. But today, where small businesses fail at an alarming rate, a frail-hearted young entrepreneur is discouraged to fall by the roadside.

Image: Rebrandly.com

While smart startups dive to the root of why those small businesses actually fail and doing that, most think, will help them get ahead of the curve and secure them a high ROI in the future. But that is not enough. In fact, it is just one of the growth hacking strategies for small businesses I’ll be sharing here. Also, to put you a hundred steps ahead, I’ll show you how successful startups have and are still implementing these growth hacks. And how you can follow their lead to become your business growth hacker and implement these same strategies in;

• Improving Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
• Creating generative funnels
• Creating campaigns that convert
• Lead generation
• Products awareness
• And more…

But I don’t know what growth hacking is nor do I know who a growth hacker is. I hear you say. See… what I’m doing here is taking you to the root of business growth hacking. I mean starting from the very scratch. Plus… you may even become a commercial growth hacker if you take this with seriousness. Ready? Let’s get around the formalities. You can visit this page if you have questions on how to start an LLC as we did not cover that here.

What Is Growth Hacking? Let’s Explore!

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According to Growth Hacker CEO, Sean Ellis, growth hacking is all about consumer growth. It is a system of digital and non-digital activities you employ to reel in more consumers to increase your business ROI. These activities include;

• Engineering
• Analytical thinking
• Innovations and creativity
• Social media monitoring
• Social media metrics and metrics analysis
• R and D

Who is a Growth Hacker

Image: Growth-hackers.net

A growth hacker is an engineer and at the same time a marketer equipped with the right tools, skills, and initiatives supported by a strong drive to increase consumer growth. So, speaking of the engineering part, you need to be well-versed in testing business-growth-stimulating tools and ideas. And be able to use your initiatives in improving or bringing these tested tools and strategies to their peak potential. And… with your marketing knowledge, you harness these upgraded tools and strategies in marketing products and services! Shorley…

The only difficult part, which is most important, is experimentation. Because today, for every business activity, there are so many business management tools available for free and you might get overwhelmed. But I have done the experiments for you. Not too shabby? See below the tools and tactics you need for your growth hacker marketing.

Outline of the Top Growth Hacking Strategies for Small Businesses

1. Be Well-Informed and Connected
2. Become a Goal-setter
3. Level up your Pre Launch List
4. Build an App/Plugin
5. Build a Social Media Community
6. Help a Reporter Out
7. Freemium Products
8. Create Irresistible Call-to-action
9. Data Analytics for Decision Making
10. Reviews as Testimonials

In details…

1. Be Well-Informed and Connected

As you know, I lay much emphasis on education investment. Getting yourself well-informed keeps you abreast of the rapidly evolving marketing cycle. One of the best ways to start is to jump on some of the best online growth hacking marketing courses. By this, you stand on solid ground. And to keep up with the spinning wheel, BE CONNECTED to this muscled top 10 growth hackers. Also, this growth hacker community on Facebook by Josh Fechter is a place to be.

2. Become a Goal-setter

Startups that are struggling are those who failed to do their assignments before coming to the Market. Learn to set goals and define how these goals will be achieved. When I say, set goals, I mean to make this sort of list:

• How much do I want to reel in for time Y?
• What are my weaknesses and strength?
• How many customers do I need to hit my target?
• How many emails do I need to send to these customers?
• How do I build these customers?
• What if I integrate this idea, will it help me hit my target?
• What effect will removing this from my strategies have on my goal?

Remember what Dr. Myles Munroe said:

The poorest man in the world is a man without a dream. 

3. Level up your Pre Launch List

Heads Up! You’ve got a list of pre-launch customers? If you don’t, you’ve got to. At the pre-launching stage, a marketer harnesses customers-generating strategies like these to generate a pre-launch list:

• Launching an effective giveaway campaign
• Building a strong mailing list

Now, I expect you to have your pre-launch list. The next starting point is; leveraging your pre-launch list. How do you do this?

• Build a prelaunch landing page with Getresponse
• Build influencers outreaches
• Run a successful contest with these 7 actionable steps
• Make a magical pre-launch video for your product
• Optimize your referral marketing

4. Build an App/Plugin

Remember the goal of a growth hacker is growth—customer growth! And the best way to attract more customers is through creating Apps and plugins that solve their pressing problems. This strategy is easy for an App developer. But just in case you’re not into coding, getting a developer on Fiverr is easy and cheap. As a plus… making these plugins free for use is a sure-fire channel to shovel in more customers in a short period.

5. Build a Social Media Community

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Joining a community boosts your growth marketing knowledge and connection. But creating your own community level up your overall business growth. You should create a group around your products and services on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Add your pre-launch customers to these groups and keep them happy with the continuous posting of articles, videos, and eBooks that leverage users’ experience. Remember to throw in some freebies when you can to bring out the “social” in your community. Make inquiries on their problems (problems related to your industry/products) and provide them with the best solutions. By so doing, you become their number one go-to. You are building a good CRM (Customer Relationship Management). You become a MENTOR!

6. Help a Reporter Out

Image: SlideShare

Every entrepreneur is a problem-solver. And it is in solving problems that money is. And that is where you should be. Therefore, stepping into HARO (Help A Reporter Out) platform will connect you with journalists and reporters who regularly put their issues upfront. Though most of the questions won’t be related to your products or industry. But if you could set out a part of your time on this platform, you will eventually hit a problem your product could solve. See the equation below:

Your product = Y

Reporters problems= X

Solution = Z

So… Y – X = Z

Note that the higher the solution of your product turnout, the higher the chance of converting these reporters to potential customers.

You may start with these  10 HARO-like tools to score great media mentions for your business.

7. Freemium Products

Everybody, especially your customers, loves free things. Since 90% of customers make decisions based on their semi-conscious minds. Therefore, you can bring this to your growth hack marketing advantage by dishing out freemium products. This will not only allow them to test drive your products but give them assurance and guarantee of the values you promised them in your videos and campaigns. You can, later on, take off this offer after building enough customers but I don’t think any smart entrepreneur should have enough customers.

Take advantage of this email marketing service provider, the thing they have in common is a freemium plan or free trial. You’d want to follow in their footsteps to BE LIKE THEM.

8. Create Irresistible Call-to-action

Are you still sitting around shoehorning with the old “buy one get one free” strategy? It’s the 21st century for Christ’s sake. And all the  “Buy one get one free” gamification doesn’t work alone anymore without a well-optimized Call-to-action supporting them. But how do you, as a business growth hacker, implement Call-to-action to leverage your sales and reach your goals? It’s time to do what the experts are doing. Creating irresistible Call-to-actions buttons that convert through social media. Nope, you’re not alone, I promised to make it all easy for you. Isn’t it? See below: how to create powerful Call-to-actions through the most popular social media.

• How to add Call-to-action buttons to your Facebook page
• Twitter Call-to-action button
• How to add call-to-action buttons on Instagram

9. Data Analytics for Decision Making

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Decision-making is a vital aspect of every business. In fact, your business’s overall growth is determined by the decisions made on every action. Stepping on this growth hacking article is a decision you’ve made. And it’s a good one that will leverage your business growth. But for optimum decision-making, you need up-to-date data and metrics. You need to analyze these data to know where the pot is leaking and where you need to do some patching. You will be able to know where to stop working and where to put in much of your time, energy, and money. Nevertheless, you need some of these big data analysis tools and these data analysis techniques to stand your ground.

10. Reviews as Testimonials

I was talking about building your pre-launch list. Then I went forward to point out how to expand this list. Mostly through customer satisfaction created by dishing out eye-boggling offers. At this stage, you feel relaxed. Time to sit back and watch your benchmark make you smile. Shorley? Growth hackers never get to rest. A very good outcome is a tool for creating better outcomes. What do I mean? Get reviews in form of comments on your blog posts or social media pages. Collect success stories from potential customers and put them on your Web homepage. This way, you will turn new visitors into potential customers. Because whatever your present customers say of your product is a decision-making tool for new customers on whether to click the buy button or walk away.

It is also important you educate your customers on how your review system works. Many reviews went bad because the reviewer didn’t understand the rating system.

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